


Orange Shifting to Red

by the_rck



Series: How Many Hours in Dowry [2]
Category: Weiß Kreuz
Genre: Changing the Timeline, Flexible morality, Gen, How the time war starts, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 06:56:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20944196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: Ken watched Fujimiya Ran as he watched his sister selling flowers. Ken still hoped he wouldn't have to intervene, but he was pretty sure that that possibility had evaporated years before.Or years ahead. Time travel did weird things to duration and sequence.





	Orange Shifting to Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [demitas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/demitas/gifts).

Ken watched Fujimiya Ran as he watched his sister selling flowers. Ken still hoped he wouldn't have to intervene, but he was pretty sure that that possibility had evaporated years before.

Or years ahead. Time travel did weird things to duration and sequence.

Ken would never have thought that he'd have to understand something as complicated as time. He'd always had other people who could handle the thinky bits. He'd always made sure of that. Doing that, needing that, had fucked him over a time or three, but making judgment calls about strategy gave him headaches.

He could do tactics. Strategy was a son-of-a-bitch that always contorted to stab as many people as possible.

As long as Ran was only watching, Ken didn't have to step in, but Ken wouldn't have been there if Ran was likely to remain content with that.

****

"I've already been then five times," Yohji said. "A sixth time-- Well, I _tried_. I can't get within a year of the right dates without snapping back here. Back now. The time before last cracked bone, last time--" He raised his hands to show the tremor. "After the bones, I gave the device to Ran, but that fucked everything worse. I got it back, but I can't stop him or ask him to stop himself." He buried his fingers in his hair. "This isn't the apocalypse I was supposed to stop, but I'm not sure that it matters."

Ken nodded because, really, when the world was ending, it didn't matter that it was ending differently than it had last time. "Omi'd be better than me."

Yohji shook his head. "Omi's _Mamoru_ now. He'd do what Ran did and go after extraneous shit."

Ken hadn't answered for almost a minute because the idea that Hidaka Ken was the one who could be trusted not to get distracted, not to make emotional decisions, not to misread the situation and-- "We're so fucked," he said at last.

"You can change things." Yohji's smile wouldn't have fooled the most besotted fangirl, and Ken wasn't buying it. "I've done it. I guarantee you can. My mother made the device, and she built it to last."

Ken gave Yohji the stink-eye, but he accepted the mission. An apocalypse was an apocalypse was an apocalypse. "It's not like I can make it worse."

****

Ken considered his options.

Fujimiya Ran's priorities were narrowly defined, and he still had Yohji's time travel device. Yohji's mother's time travel device. Ran was entirely capable of waging war across decades or even centuries if it would keep his sister alive. He'd probably prefer keeping Sakura alive since Aya-chan loved her. The lizard was probably safe, too. The rest of the world could burn. Or drown. Or be devoured.

Ken's range of acceptable collateral damage less all encompassing. He closed his eyes for a moment. He needed something to change in this place and in this time, but did he have to do it personally? He had to. Why else would Yohji have said--

Right. Yohji was trying to give Ken a clear shot at a well defined goal. Yohji didn't think that Ken could manage anything else. Yohji both hadn't interacted with Ken in over a decade and remembered versions of Ken who had learned different lessons from life.

Yohji was probably also trying to keep Ken from changing the events that led to the four of them as Weiss. Ken wasn't supposed to notice that he could go back further.

Ken doubted that Ran had missed that part, so this change was probably a test, before Ran tried something larger and further back. Ran needed to know the wind blew and how flat the field was. He needed to know how the grass lay. Ken didn't know any of those things, either, and Yohji wasn't going to tell him.

Ken didn't like his odds of success. Yohji'd been now _five_ times. How many iterations of Ran were here now?

Ken also hadn't missed that Yohji hadn't found an apocalypse-free future yet. That part wasn't Ran's fault. He hadn't helped, but it wasn't his fault.

Ken turned his back on Fujimiya Ran and on the flower shop where they both used to work. He found a men's toilet on the ground floor of the right building and took himself back to the night when Takatori Reiji died. All he had to do was to find Schwarz as they were walking out of the building.

He had limited information about where his targets would be and when. Stopping someone who could change the past was going to require a man who could see the future.


End file.
